AS COWICHAN GOES, SO GOES THE WORLD, 42:00, a Documentary Video about Healthy Communities produced for the BC Coalition for Health Promotion, is available to community groups and NonProfits for meetings and workshops.

3:00 PREVIEW AT http://youtu.be/1sodrPP59dc

Filmed over two years, exclusively within the Cowichan Valley's volunteer and non-profit sector, to illustrate that all similar communities everywhere share the same social issues and challenges which are usually remedied best by caring individuals alone or in groups within the community.
The BC Coalition on Health Promotion's main message is that citizens of all ages, abilities, economic circumstances, and ethnic backgrounds are making significant contributions to the health and quality of life for people living in British Columbia communities. Common sense and prudent public policy demands that adequate funding be made to the non profit sector to deliver these essential social benefits.'

PROVIDENCE FARM, a Therapeutic Agricultural Community Series of 5:00 minidocs on aspects of operation for website. On web now.

GETWAY FILMS has joined with Vancouver's VILLON FILMS to produce a major documentary on THE SPANISH EARTH, a documentary masterpiece by the legendary Dutch filmmaker, Joris Ivens who was joined by writer Ernest Hemingway, photographer Robert Capa, journalist Martha Gellhorn and film editor Helen van Dongen in Spain during the 1936 to 1939 Spanish civil war. '

'In the late 1930s, the Spanish Civil War grips the Western world. An attempt by a group of generals to overthrow an elected government made up of socialists, communists, and anarchists (the Popular Front) has once again brought war to a reluctant Europe. Britain, France, Canada and the United States obey an arms embargo while Fascist Germany and Italy send troops, tanks and planes to the Falangists. The Soviets lend lukewarm but the only military aid to the Popular Front.'

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In the United States, radio, newspapers and newsreels, abetted by Big Business & the Catholic Church, are virulently antagonistic to the Popular Front. To counter this one-sided assault, a group of American leftist writers form a company to produce films supporting Spain�s leftwing elected government as a barricade to the rise of Fascism threatening the world. They enlist Joris Ivens who has documented the lives of Belgian miners, worked in a Moscow film studio, and has recently completed a film about an American unemployed workers in the Depression.'

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The Making of Spanish Earth will be constructed from a series of interviews with Ivens, Gellhorn, Spanish Earth's editor Helen Van Dongen and journalist George Seldes filmed by Peter Davis in the 1980s, and never before seen, supplemented with substantial clips from other films by Ivens and a wealth of photographic material, including Robert Capa's. Our documentary will tell the story of the passions, personalities and politics involved in the making and distributing of this foremost documentary on the conflict, and seminal visual treatment of war. Ivens' social realist approach is in stark contrast to the Fascist romanticism of Leni Riefenstahl. In what was the first TOTAL WAR of the era, Ivens shows the impact of aerial bombing on a defenseless population, and the mobilization of civilians to provide food for their fighting men. He thereby creates the template for future documentaries of people's wars. We intend to also include an examination, through interviews with contemporary documentary filmmakers, of the differences between documentary, propaganda, and agit-prop, concluding by questioning whether the concept of neutral or "objective" reporting is ever possible or even desirable.

NOW AVAILABLE

SOCIAL GOSPEL & the PUBLIC GOOD
New 2 disc DVD Special Study Edition featuring the 50 minute documentary on the political populist visionaries JS Woodsworth and William Aberhart, plus over 3 hours of expanded commentary with the contributors. (See preview clip)

AMERICA, LOVE IT OR LEAVE IT
50' documentary on the Vietnam-era war-resisters who sought refuge in Canada. New Special Edition DVD with bonus material; produced for CBC & WTVS Detroit (PBS). With the IRAQ War in the news, this 1991 documentary on the role Canada has historically played as a release-valve for American political tensions from escaped slaves, Empire Loyalists, McCarthy-era "progressives" to the 135,000 young anti-Vietnam idealists has fresh relevance. (See preview clip)

TOMSON HIGHWAY GETS HIS TROUT
A one hour television special on Bravo! TV in September 2004. A record of celebrated playwright Tomson Highway's new play, ERNESTINE SHUSWAP GETS HER TROUT, in workshop and rehearsal leading up to world premiere by Western Canada Theatre in Kamloops, BC in January 2004: cross-cultural politics and true Canadian indigenous art.